Air traffic staff shortage deepens flight delays amid 8-day shutdown
By CNN, October 9, 2025The Federal Aviation Administration is again reporting short staffing at air traffic control operations as the government shutdown continues in its eighth day.
On Wednesday evening, six major air traffic control facilities will be short-staffed, according to a publicly available FAA operations plan.
Shortages were reported at control towers near Washington, DC, and Denver, facilities that control planes arriving or departing at Newark and Orlando, along with parts of centres that control airspace based in New Mexico and California.
While acknowledging controllers may be “stressed out” by the economic realities of the shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said controllers “got to go to work.”
“I’m encouraging air traffic controllers to show up for work. They need to go to their jobs. They need to control the airspace,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper Wednesday night.
Over the past nine months, he noted 5 per cent of air travel delays were caused by staffing shortages, but today it was 53 per cent.
The control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport will not have its normal complement of controllers from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. local time Wednesday night. Delays for flights heading to the airport are “probable” and could average 31 minutes, according to the FAA.
Controllers at the airport have been under scrutiny since the airport was the site of a January 29 deadly collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet that killed 67 people, and a subsequent series of close calls.
The air traffic control tower in Denver will also not have all of its staff from 9 p.m. to midnight ET, Wednesday.
The controllers who handle flights arriving and departing Newark Liberty International Airport will also be short-staffed from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. with estimated delays of up to 30 minutes.
Earlier Wednesday, the facility was short-staffed for two hours, starting at 7 a.m. local time. It was the only operation to report a so-called “staffing trigger” for the morning shift, according to an FAA operations plan.
The facility handling flights approaching Newark, which is based in Philadelphia, also saw staffing shortages earlier this year when communication and radar outages caused five controllers to take trauma leave, resulting in thousands of cancelled flights.
The number of controllers is expected to be below normal levels at the approach control, which handles flights landing and taking off at Orlando International Airport between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Two air route traffic control centres, that manage airspace for flights across a wide region will also have staffing shortages. Albuquerque Centre will be short-staffed until 10 p.m. ET, and Los Angeles Centre will not have a full staff from 7:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. ET.
The location and duration of the shortages have been inconsistent, Duffy said. “There’s no rhyme or reason to what’s happening with these controllers, but the truth is, we need to open up the government again.”
Staffing shortages do not always mean airports will see delays. There are a variety of things the FAA can do to manage airspace, including rerouting en route flights, though sometimes delays are needed to ensure planes can operate safely.
“When you see delays, it’s because we’re not willing to take additional risk if we don’t have the staff to fly your flight on time,” Duffy said.
The cause of the staffing problems was not immediately known, but the Department of Transportation reported an increase in sick calls by air traffic controllers since the start of the shutdown.
Weather is also expected to impact flights in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Fort Lauderdale Wednesday.
The Transportation Security Administration, which operates security screening checkpoints at US airports, has not seen slowdowns due to officers calling out sick.
“TSA has not experienced any delay in operations due to callouts, and remains fully capable of facilitating safe and secure travel for passengers,” the agency said in a statement.